His Temporary Assistant

I shrugged. “We went out a few times. We’re still friends. Just no spark.”

“But she’s smokin’. Doesn’t that count for something?”

I shrugged again and finished off my lemonade, feeling like a class A chump. How could I tell him I was developing an aversion to casual dating? Not because I wanted something serious. Hell no.

Lucky and I were Crescent Cove’s original bachelors. When all the single men around us tumbled like timber for the whole marriage and babies scene, we stood strong. We didn’t want any of that. Pleasures of the flesh were enough for us, thank you.

No commitment. No stress.

No way, not in baby central anymore. How could you possibly enjoy a no-strings hookup in a place like the Cove? We’d become known across the northeast for ease in procreation. The damn town bird might as well have been the stork.

I gestured to the remaining items left in the back of my SUV. We’d packed that sucker like a Tetris game, taking advantage of every millimeter of space. “You going to help me with this stuff or what?”

“Help? I’ve been carrying most of it while you stand around out here sipping lemonade like a southern belle.” To show off—as usual—he picked up my bookcase under one arm and grabbed another small shelving unit with his other hand. Then he winked at me before heading inside.

Since I knew quite well his posturing probably had to do with the woman he’d mentioned probably innocently dancing in her own apartment, I grabbed a couple of small end tables and followed him toward the sexy music.

After we went upstairs, I stepped around him to open the door to the hallway before we continued on toward my apartment. The music only grew louder as we walked.

Apartments branched off in two directions. There were only a few on each floor, and for now, there were three levels. There was still room for more on the very top floor, but Forrester was taking his time there, gauging interest, before he decided to make it one big place or split it up like the other ones. On the roof, there was a communal gathering space for all the tenants’ use.

This property right across from the lake was in a prime location, what with Macy’s Brewed Awakening on the bottom floor and the Cove’s real estate market booming. I’m sure Forrester liked being the hottest ticket in town.

“Holy shit,” I mumbled as I walked into the back of Lucky, who had stopped dead outside my door.

And who could blame him, because the door across the hall was cracked open, just enough to reveal a scantily clad blond winding around a pole that had been drilled into her floor. Or attached there somehow, well enough to support the gyrations she was doing around it.

To it.

“Told you,” Lucky said smugly, panting slightly from what he held. He appeared to be glued in place and had not set it down yet.

“Does she realize the door is open?”

I was fervently glad that it was, even if I felt a bit like a pervert watching her. Her eyes were closed as she moved to the music, so she didn’t know we were out here, but she was dressed—albeit in a minuscule way.

When Lucky didn’t reply, I tried again. “Since the door is open, maybe she wants us to see?” It was a mostly hopeful question.

My conscience was screaming now. I had a sister and a niece and of course a mom. I taught kids. Spying on her wasn’t kosher.

Unless she had some exhibitionistic tendencies and didn’t mind if we peeped on her. At least she wasn’t naked.

I would just keep telling myself that.

“I cracked the door open a little, wanting to see where the music was coming from,” Lucky admitted, voice low. “She hadn’t latched it though. I’m not that bad.”

“Asshole.” I jabbed the pointed corner of one of my end tables into his back.

He grunted and dropped the bookcase on his toe. His unholy bellow of pain made the gorgeous blond stop dancing, just as I set down my furniture and moved toward her door to firmly pull it shut.

Well, that had been my intention anyway. I didn’t make it all the way to closing the door, because her face fucking slayed me.

I could admit I hadn’t noticed it before, as occupied as I’d been with her fluid movements. She was seriously coordinated. Flexible. Hot as fuck. But then she just had to have a stunning face to match, with fiery eyes—color undetermined from this distance—and full lips and enough cleavage to kill a man who’d been abstinent for, oh, close to eight months now.

The last woman I’d asked out had ended up engaged to the sheriff within weeks. So, that kind of gave a reading on the state of my love life.

“What in the goddess are you doing?” she demanded, lowering the music and marching to the door at a rate of speed sufficient to make all the dangling threads from her top flutter over her abs.

She had a twinkling jewel in her navel. I was reasonably sure the beam of light from it had rendered me cross-eyed. Possibly altered some of my bodily functions as well.